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| Don't catcall women who wrestle like Millie McKenzie, okay pigs? Photo via Gerweck.net |
Fight Club Pro in Wolverhampton, England on Saturday featured one of its younger wrestlers, Millie McKenzie in a big multiperson scramble match that also featured legitimate wrestling legend CIMA. I'd like to say it was notable because she was in the ring with him and David Starr and Mark Haskins and some other top talent. She's only 17 years old, and already she's growing and becoming one of the top wrestlers in her company and, her King of Trios appearance showing, others as well. But apparently, someone in the crowd saw her and decided it was a good opportunity to shout "GET YOUR TITS OUT."
For every good thing fans, wrestlers, and sometimes promotions do, some backwards piece of shit decides he (it's almost always a "he") is going to take wrestling "back" for cave dwellers and misogynists. Yelling for a minor to loose her bosom in public is intolerably bad, but doubling down and defending this shit in public, whether in print, bandwidth, or social media, creates a firestorm that can make wrestling unwelcome to the kinds of people that these cretins and bigots are marginalizing. It's one thing if the people making noise are low-follower eggs on Twitter who may or may not have burner handles, but it's another thing in particular when the people arguing for regression and objectification are Billi Bhatti, a piece of shit "journalist" whose main hobbies on Twitter are attempting to bait Dave Meltzer, getting into arguments with Jimmy Havoc, writing open letters to Brian "Road Dogg" James, and trying to big-time local wrestling journalists for opinions he doesn't think are good.
Bhatti went on a Twitter spree not only defending the misogynist heckler, but he doubled down, making claims that "real" fans would rather see a return to the days of Sunny and Sable as sex symbols than Bayley and Sasha Banks as high-profile wrestlers, that Paige's sex tape was a better feature of her than her wrestling, and that wrestling companies should cater to him because he pays money, as if people like, I don't know, me also pay money to see the best women's wrestlers and wrestling on any level. I'd link to these tweets, but Bhatti, after melting down and losing his job writing for Sports Keeda, got permanently suspended from Twitter as he should. It's refreshing to see Twitter dispatching bigots rather than people attacking bigots for a change, but I digress.
Exhorting the values of shouting down misogynists among fans and even wrestlers has been the rule of the day for awhile, and it's worked somewhat. Groups like the PW Grrrl Gang have provided safe spaces for women at shows, and fans in general are getting better at accommodating fans of all marginalized demographics. But it's getting to the point where the fans and even the workers have reached their limit of what they can do. It's now up to the promoters, which is where the dynamic of leftist thought comes in, both socially (acceptance of women as equal to men) and economically (not just blindly taking money from people regardless of whether they're going to behave or not). The social angle is a layup. Promotions should not tolerate abuse of women (or LGBTQ, disabled, racial minorities, ethnic minorities, or religious minorities) from anyone in the crowd because those people are people, just like the able-boded, cishet, White male fans. Not only should these people evade harassment, but promotions should also stop booking angles that remind them of the oppression they feel in everyday society.
However, they should go a step further and realize that not all money is good money. For too long in wrestling, promoters and even wrestlers get the idea in their heads that money is the only metric that matters. Even ignoring the fact that sexist chanting keeps away dollars from female fans and their allies, dollars that are just as good as ones from Bhatti and other misogynist scum, it fosters an unsafe environment for everyone there. Promotions need to start not only throwing these asswipes out of the building, but keeping tabs on them, at least as well as one can without breaking any pursuant privacy laws. For example, Bhatti is prominent inasmuch as he's been on reality television and has a podcast with a bunch of Twitter followers (even if like half of them are bots and sock puppets). You can easily ban him from your premises.
You could try to ban fans who have been kicked out prior from entering as well. Doing rudimentary research on bigots online who don't hide their identities is another good policy. Either way, promotions need to do some work to weed out the bad seeds and make sure crowds are welcoming for everyone. This practice, admittedly, will be impossible to implement fully because the assholes will still filter in regardless. But acting and making sure you outwardly show care to your fans and wrestlers to have a safe environment goes a long way.
Millie McKenzie should not be making headlines because she got catcalled in the most rudimentary and crude fashion possible. She should be making headlines for what she does in the ring or on the microphone. That's what leftists want for every facet of society. It's not going to stop until the people running these promotions realize that not all money is worth the static.
